


Sunshine and Rainbows

by Llaeyro



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Regression, F/F, POV First Person, isolation from family due to mental health, non-sexual caregiver/little, soft mommy, soft mummy, vague mentions of trauma, wlw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 10:24:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20851898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llaeyro/pseuds/Llaeyro
Summary: This isn’t the life Parvati expected with Lavender, but she couldn’t be happier.





	Sunshine and Rainbows

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to explore a less talked about side to caregiver/little dynamics, I hope I’ve done it justice. Thank you to my alpha for lending their personal experience and for my beta for being fabulous as always.

It’s been nearly five years since the war ended — three and a half years since Lavender was discharged from St Mungo’s — yet still, Padma is the only person who has been to our house.

Not that our family and friends don’t want to come, they do, but… It’s getting to the point where we may just have to talk to people about it, as I am running out of excuses. Our family, in particular, seem to know we’re hiding something.

I’m building this up like some huge, dark secret but actually, it’s all the small, brightly coloured things scattered around our home that will strike people as odd. To most people, they would seem to be nothing unusual. It’s the crayons spread across the living room table, the sippy cup in the cupboard and the sandpit and swing in the garden. Most people would assume I live with a child. They wouldn’t exactly be wrong, except my ‘child’ is seven months older than I am.

It started with the fwooper. 

I’d been by her bedside for months, the only person she would speak to, and only in whispers. Once she started communicating with staff herself, I was expected to begin my training or risk losing my position as a junior healer. I worried that she would regress at the news, go back to being unable to talk at all, so I attempted to soften the blow. I bought her a cuddly toy fwooper, charmed to hold onto my scent. I hoped it would bring her comfort when I couldn’t be there. I hoped that it would remind her that she is loved, that she is a priority. She called him Fuzzfuzz, and he never leaves her side.

It worked, for the most part, although I lost count of the number of times I was called down from my own ward because she refused to cooperate with other junior healers. We’d planned to move in together straight after Hogwarts, but when they started talking about discharging Lavender, I knew we needed to have a serious discussion.

I discussed it with Lavender, of course, but I also had to sit through hours of concerned colleagues, family and friends. I understood where they were coming from. I was still processing the last year myself. I continued to have dreams haunted by memories and twisted into something newly horrific by my fear-fueled imagination. Yet I knew I was uniquely placed to help her through this. I knew that our bond, the trust we’d forged between us through our school years, would get us through together.

After another four months recovering at home, we found Lavender a job in Diagon Alley. She helped an elderly seer, just for one day a week at first, cleaning and managing the store while he gave readings in the back room. It was quiet and low pressure, but in a field that had always interested her. Fuzzfuzz went with her, of course, shrunk down to fit discreetly inside her pocket.

She’d seemed to be getting more and more back to herself, but as her hours at the shop increased, she began to plateau at home. She would come back so tired and short-tempered, bursting into tears at the slightest inconvenience. I didn’t always manage to keep my cool with her; my patience already stretched thin by the pressures of work and study. Things were tense, for a while. Unhealthy, if I’m honest. It could have all broken down if it hadn’t fallen into place for me when it did.

It was a chance conversation with a colleague that did it. She’d wanted her child to go to Muggle school before Hogwarts, as she had done, but his struggles had her second-guessing herself. As she told me about his quiet, sullen demeanour when he got home, it was so familiar to me. The avoidance of questions, of demands, seeking to absorb themselves in a favoured activity, we could almost have been talking about the same person. I realised that the silent, scared, thumb-sucking little girl that Lavender had seemed to be in her early recovery hadn’t actually gone anywhere, she was just hiding behind this charade of adulthood, and it was _exhausting_ her.

I let myself sit on it for another week or so, thinking about how to bring it up and what, if anything, may have to change in our relationship. When we did talk, we sat beside each other on our sofa, and I didn’t say much. It was as if the mere mention of it flipped the switch and the flood gates opened. She poured her heart out to me, told me everything she had felt too ashamed and scared to admit. I held her and listened and told her I understood, even as a screaming voice inside my head insisted I was way out of my depth. I already knew that this wasn’t a phase; this was an essential part of who Lavender was and how she copes with all she’s been through. I began to worry over who I would possibly turn to when I needed advice. How could I possibly explain it to our friends and family?

I need to be clear about something: I am not ashamed of Lavender. Whether she’s telling me a reading she gave resonated with a customer or attaching a crayon drawing proudly to the message board, I am immensely proud of my wife-to-be. I’m proud of how far she has come. I am proud of how she continues to battle her demons. I am proud of how she has embraced what works for her. At the same time, I am aware that others, well-meaning as they are, will not see the situation as I do.

Lavender is not broken. Yes, her regressions are a product of the trauma she experienced, but they are not a symptom. They are a solution. Who was it, anyway, who decided that certain activities are only to be enjoyed up until a certain age? Why can’t an adult enjoy creative pursuits and indulge in harmless fantasy? Why is it acceptable for a twenty-three-year-old with a toddler to enjoy an imaginary tea-party but unacceptable for me to do the same with my twenty-three-year-old fiancee? What is the point of working, of saving, of _living_ if we deny ourselves the things that bring us joy?

I enjoy my work but, let’s be honest; adult life is grey. It is overcast, even on the warmest of days. Whereas Lavender, when she doesn’t feel the pressure to wear her adulthood like a costume, she is all sunshine and rainbows. She’ll sit at the table in fairy wings, tongue stuck out in concentration as she works on her latest masterpiece in crayon. She’ll dance around the room to nursery rhymes, wearing a tutu and her sparkly unicorn slippers. She’ll curl up in my lap, sucking her thumb contentedly as I brush and plait her hair.

That’s only sometimes. Most of the time, Lavender is my partner. My equal. We do everything you’d expect any couple to do. We both bring in a salary, we share the housework, we share a bed. We support each other’s interests, we occasionally put aside our own needs when the other’s is greater, we love each other fiercely and wholly. In that first talk, she told me that adulthood felt like this huge weight constantly dragging her down that only lifted when she let herself indulge in something ‘childish’. There was a lot that I didn’t understand yet, but I knew with unshakeable certainty that we could work it out together. 

I held her close as sobs wracked her body, pleas for normality mumbled brokenly into my chest. I gently shushed her as we rocked back and forth, muttering promises and reassurances into her hair. Eventually, she looked up at me with big, scared eyes and softly asked me, “Will you be my mummy?”

“Of course, my darling girl,” I told her. “I already am.”

And, when she needs me to be, I have been ever since.


End file.
